The other night, a friend asked me, "What's the biggest change for you, in your spiritual journey, from where you used to be, to where you are now?"

There's an easy, one-word answer to that question: Love.

And there's a complicated, one-word answer to that question: Love.

Frankfurt, Germany (photo: Andy Bruner)

It turns out that Love is a gateway drug.

It seems innocent enough, to believe and experience, little by little, that God loves you, just as you are.

But gradually Love takes over more and more and more.

You start to wonder that if God loves you, just as you are, whether he might not love others that same way too.

And you start to feel like your job in this world is to pass around the Love.

That and nothing more.

And then you start to wonder how the Bible would be different if you looked through Love instead of guilt and shame and fear and control.

And when you're in religious places that depend on fear and control and guilt and shame to keep members inside a fence, it feels like being deprived of every good and perfect and life-giving thing.

And you have to get out, into the open air again.

You find yourself wanting to live and breathe and move in Love all the time.

Love will wreck your life-as-you-knew-it until nothing else will do but Love.

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.” CS Lewis